If you are looking to take your business to the next level and you also have the resources to build you own team of online marketing specialists, then you need to know what positions are vital to build to most effective team.
In today’s digital age, remote teams are very popular and highly effective. This allows you to assemble the best team, regardless of location. You don’t all have to be sitting in the same office to deliver amazing results. So, if you are ready to step up your digital marketing results, here are the key hires you need to make and bring onto your team.
Operations Director
You need one person who has an understanding of what every single digital strategy involves and how they all tie together. This is someone you need to trust and someone that needs to understand your business as well as you do.
“Every piece of a digital marketing strategy needs to be coordinated together,” says Irene McConnell of Arielle Executive. “For example, a content strategy needs to be matched with the SEO strategy to help deliver the best results. The social media, both organic and paid, need to work together, as well.” When you are looking for an operational director you need to find someone that really understands how everything gels together.
Some of the best operations director positions are filled by ex-agency owners that are looking to scale down, maybe after selling their agency or having it acquired, and looking for a new challenge.
Content Writer
If you are serious about your content effort then you may want to consider hiring a full time writer rather than outsourcing to a mogul. Not only can you cut costs, but you will develop a more consistent voice for your brand and blog.
“Hiring different freelancers is a fine way to start, and it’s better than not publishing content, but if you are looking to publish multiple posts a day then you might want to hire a fulltime writer,” says Pat Skinner, Business Development Manager in charge of all AnswerFirst’s service offerings. “You can go the contractor route but try to lock up a writer on an exclusive basis on a salary.”
You will need to establish some sort of requirement, as far as how much content is being produced if you opt to pay a monthly salary. You can also get creative, offering bonuses for content that hits specific milestones in terms of comments, links, social shares, etc.
Graphic Designer
Having a graphic designer on your team can benefit you in several ways. It can really help to take your business branding to the next level.
“When you have a fulltime graphic designer you can have them do little things that you never wanted to spend money on before,” says Oliver James. You can check out Perth Web Design, his company, for excellent graphic design examples. “Things like custom social media images, custom blog header images and other little touches go a long way when it comes to creating a strong brand presence.”
It also allows you to make on the fly changes to your website. When you are relying on freelancers the turn time can be days. When you have someone fulltime it can be within minutes and hours. The impact can be huge. The ability to create content on your blog with multiple images makes your content pop more, like it does on this fitness blog.
Outreach Lead
Outreach is key to content marketing, PR, and link building. You will never get strong results if you do it part time or have several people trying to handle it. When you have one person in charge of the effort you will see that consistency pay off much faster.
“The key to successful outreach is often the relationships, and when you are able to have one person as the face of your company for all outreach efforts it helps build those valuable relationships,” explains Andrew Tran of Therapy Blanket. “When the blogs and outlets you pitch constantly see the same person it helps make that connection, which eventually results in an accepted pitch or a reply to an email.”
The person for this position needs to have experience in link building as well as all SEO areas, as the main objective with this is to build links.
SEO Lead
SEO has so many different moving parts these days, so it’s important to have one main SEO contact that is in charge of laying out the plan.
“Whomever is in charge of the SEO effort needs to coordinate with the social media team, the content team, the outreach team, etc.,” says Tad Thomas, Managing Partner of this top law firm. “Everything works together so you need to have someone that is like a coach. Their goal is to win the game, and it will require all of the players doing their job to accomplish that.”
SEO is always changing, so make sure whoever is in this position is committed to self-education as well. You need to find someone that is constantly reading the top SEO blogs and open to attending the big SEO conferences. Your SEO lead needs to thrive on always being head of the SEO curve.
Social Media Director
A lot of businesses will throw an intern on social media duty and call it a day. They don’t invest in their social media at all and think that simply posting a couple times a day is all it takes.
“You need someone that not only understands social media, but also understands your business and your target customer,” says Ignacio Soria of cannandco.net. “Every business is active on social media now, so you need to find ways to really capture consumer attention and engagement, and you will only do that when you know how to trigger that target. Simply posting generic content isn’t going to make your business stand out.”
The brands that are winning on social media these days are showing off a personality and using humor to connect with their audience. When you do it right, your followers will share your content and help to naturally amplify it for you.
Facebook Ads Specialist
If you have a marketing budget, then a percentage of it needs to be allocated towards Facebook ads. And unless you have an experienced Facebook ads pro on your team then you will be throwing a lot of money away.
“Facebook ads are very effective but only if you know what you are doing,” says Loren Taylor of Soothing Company, manufacturers of outdoor planters. “If not, you might as well just light a pile of money on fire. If you can hire a fulltime Facebook ads media buyer that is great, but if not, at least consider hiring an agency with experience.” Doing it yourself without knowing the latest changes will result in wasted ad spend.
The Facebook platform is always changing. There are certain ways to properly maximize the results and ROS (return on ad-spend), which are better understood by an agency that is managing hundreds of campaigns and millions of dollars in spend a month.